nang's Profile

I wouldn't worry SourberryLily, I didn't think those above were being harsh...all good info. I have a girlfriend whose daughter has celiac and another girlfriend who is gluten-intolerant as are two of her three kids. Celiac is an auto-immune disease, and once you have one auto-immune disease the probability of getting another one is much greater. Allergies are auto-immune too, as is thyroid, arthritis, etc. Having an intolerance isn't really an allergy...at least according to my allergist. Therefore you can test negative to it on an allergy test and still have it cause problems for you. The gluten-free diet may in fact, help some people lose weight because they are cutting out bread/wheat products which as we know are carbs which turn into sugar faster than protein...excess sugar is stored as fat. If you're not eating a chicken sandwich because you can't eat the bread, then maybe you're eating a chicken salad? Plus, for me...I'd have to give up beer and I am a self proclaimed beer snob. I have another acquaintance that developed a wheat allergy so bad that he has to carry an epi-pen and if there is a bread product on his plate with his food at a restaurant, it will cause him to go into anaphylactic (not sure I spelled that correctly) shock. And guess what...he's HORRIBLY overweight...so he's definitely not your poster child for losing weight through a wheat/gluten intolerance. I'm glad more awareness is coming to it, but as with all things there will be those that proclaim to have it that don't...or those that simply feel better for avoiding the "culprit." Whatever the "culprit" is for them, if they feel better then more power to them...sometimes, medical science cannot explain why one feels better after cutting certain things out of a diet...but we know it works. Here's my classic example: My daughter was breast feed for six months. Then we went to formula. She developed lots of ear infections (like 9 in 9 months), eczema, and diarrhea. We switch to a soy based product and she did much better. Then it was time to switch to milk ( I did this later than most because of all the trouble we'd had already.) We tried the regular Vit D milk. She got a terrible rash on her face and anywhere the milk touched her (hands, neck, face) and got a bloated belly, gas, and_you guessed it_terrible diarrhea...and yet another series of ear infections. I asked her ped if he thought she might be allergic to milk. He told me, no, but take her off all milk and see if she gets better. She did. I took her to an allergist. He said she had a mild true allergy but a very huge intolerance and if I keep giving her milk her body would continue to reject it more and more until she had a full blown allergy...so his advice..."stop." Amazingly, she was also allergic to other things...like maple syrup...even organic straight from the tree syrup...and blue dye...turns out she was REALLY allergic to the blue dye...needed a double dose of benedryl and a very quick car ride to the emergency room for more. It is technically impossible to be allergic to a dye because the thing causing the allegry has to have a protien...but she sure had a reaction to it! So...I think doctors continuously get smarter about things, including diagnosing "strange" things. I think it can come on suddenly, especially after your body has had a major trauma...surgery, child birth, other immune issues, other significant allergies. And I think it is very UNLIKELY to cause people to lose weight...over the long haul...unless they also make other lifestyle changes. We eat what I call a "less white stuff" diet...less wheat, rice, potatoes, etc. I am fighting breast cancer (I do NOT have it yet, but on the 'you got it' scale, I am one unit away from the 'magic' number), so that has motivated me to eat differently and to try to reduce my resting sugar levels...spikes in sugar cause the body problems and inflammation which lower the bodies ability to fight off the regularly occurring mis-fired cells. Plus, I see so many overweight kids...and not just chubby, but plain out fat children that I know what the US has been doing over the last 30 years is NOT working...

so far, I have had both sets of dampers WIDE OPEN...but obviously not getting enough airflow...*sigh*. I cleaned out the ash collector (ga_ROSS) and that didn't help either. I'm seriously considering going topless for a bit.

Oh, and I forgot...I tried waiting until they were all gray before I pour out the briquets but then they didn't last and I was trying to figure out how to add more without dumping the food off the grill...so now I wait until they are gray on the "corners" and a little bit on the sides and then dump them. Believe me, I'm charcoal challenged...but also very determined.

They are the regular ones, not competition. I'm going to give it another go this weekend. And I'm going to dump the coals on the side, not the middle...and I'm going to add some coals on which to dump the other coals...sure seems like I'm using a ton of coals. :0 I think it is the airflow...and in the gas grilling it was important to keep the lid closed so the food would cook. I'm beginning to think I should try cooking for a while with NO lid to get the hang of it???

no worries on presuming I was man, just wanted to point you in the right direction. And yes, I live in Kansas where the humidty this year has been upwards of 75% all summer. My bricquets are stored in the little trashcan like thing on the side of the grill. Works great, but I would suspect they draw in moisture.

Yes, that is my grill. I tried starting just with the propane but it took nearly a half hour to get the darn bricketts going and so now, I just use the chimney starter with a piece of newspaper in the bottom and fire up the propane and with a click and about five minutes and the chimney starter is going to town. Turn off the propane and watch those little things turn into an inferno...dump them out and then poooofffff...no heat...

I use a "chefmate" chimney I picked up at target...it holds about a gallon milk jugs worth of brickets. I use the Kingsford. I don't let them sit after I've dumped them, generally because they are a raging inferno by the time I do dump them. In the past I had a problem with running out of coals, but most recently, I figured out that if I grill without the top on I get a nice hot fire, so I must not be letting them get hot enough?

I've been a gas griller for years but when I replaced the weber gas grill I went with the charcoal weber kettle grill. The test is MUCH better, but I am constantly struggling with getting the temp up to something worthy of actually cooking the food instead of dehydrating it.

It seems like once I take the food off in exasperation, then the darn thing heats up like a blast furnace.

So question:

(1) how to start the fire?Currently I have a chimney that i put one newspaper piece in the bottom and fill the top with brickets...that gets going like a crazy blast furnace and I dump that in the center of the cooking grate.

(2) how to regulate...heat up...the brickets once they've started to cool off from the blast furnace chimney starter? I've tried all vents open and bottom vent open with top vent mostly closed. Neither work until I've grown frustrated, take everything off and then go microwave it so we can eat before bed time.